This movie gets off to a good start, with intriguing action at a good pace – unfortunately this is let down by the fact it’s mainly in German so you’ll need good subtitles to follow what’s being said.
Harrison Food looks fantastically young in the first 20 minutes, considering he’s about 80 years old here – he could easily pass for 50. He looks younger than his last outing, which was about 15 years prior. So I guess he’s wearing heavy makeup and/or there’s some kind of AI based reverse-ageing filter going on here. After 20 minutes, the scene changes to a later timeframe, and Harrison Ford looks more like his real age now.
The movie then creeps into increasing levels of tedium, until the 80 year old man starts running from a team of armed mercenaries and somehow successfully throws obstacles in their way and evades them for some time. This of course is cringeworthily unconvincing compared to when he was doing it as a much younger man. It’s getting hard to watch now.
New cast members in this movie include Shaunette Renée Wilson who in this movie looks & moves like she could be a daughter of Samuel L Jackson but apparently is not. Maybe her makeup has something to do with it.
An hour into the movie, when 80-year-old Indiana has finished fist-fighting and running around with in-prime mercenaries, we meet a Moroccan gangster so feared that the local police lower their guns and drive off. Then he opens his mouth, and we hear an Eton-schooled politician-style snotty London accent. His accent then gradually sinks into something more foreign & husky, as if we didn’t hear his opening few lines already. Sack the director please. That’s no minor faux pas. And while you’re at it, sack the writer too. Harrison Ford is way too old for this script, he should be far more reserved, and giving some new young gun the opportunity to do the bulk of the running around and fighting. Honestly this movie is like a circus in giving Ford this kind of physical work, and it’s really not necessary – he could be acting a more senior character and doing the physical stuff more sparingly and more realistically without compromising on quality so far as traditional Indiana Jones fans are concerned. After this would-be-scary little chat, Indy then runs away on foot, hobbling along as if he’s got broken ankles or is walking in quicksand, while somehow still out-running cars & motorbikes and dodging bullets too…
Half way through, we’re introduced to a character played by Antonio Banderas in his early 60s. This movie is desperately in need of some young blood.
Ford has a very croaky voice in this movie, as if he’s not got long left to live.
The lead female (with quite an Adam’s Apple) is played rather deviously by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Her character is fun yet nonchalant, and a bit mischievous, as if she’s just playing a cheeky game while being shot at and everything else. With her big nose, big chin, mischievous unsympathetic gaze and androgynous bony figure, she could make a convincing witch, but a benevolent character is a hard sell for her.
Interesting plot twist towards the end. Fascinating concept and potential for some awesome action, but unfortunately we get pretty much no action from it, only a load of mostly-static drama. As for the very very end, I found myself fast forwarding the last minute of the movie – how bad does a movie have to get for that to happen? It was just a very clearly dead drama scene going nowhere except a bit of friction and cringeworthy affection between two very elderly people.
This has got to be the worst movie in the saga, without question. So much that I’m going to rate it Barely Watchable but not quite on the level of OK like all the others were.